Seeking to Live the Narrow Path

The Language of Love

The language of love differs from the language of theology. They are both given as a single twine of string, split, so as to wrap a package, meeting again as one string in a knot that ties the gift of mankind together. What distills theology into philosophy and ideology is the lack of charity; the lack not only to speak but to express through all senses the language of love. This expression of altruism is the dogmatic core of all belief. Without this, the fountain of compassion, we are nihilistic, primordials with no aversion to hedonism, but only stirring self-loving hegemony.

The language of love is not found but lived. It is not meanings of words found in the Bible or words drawn from the lips of choirs. The language of love is a viable expression of person to person. The language of love hangs not on the words spoken, which we cast and cheapen as much as the breaths we forget that we take, which are so vital, but the intentional embraces of dignity and respect that we notice and draw as worth from another person. Only when there are no boundaries can we speak clearly this language of life and fruition.

The language of love is not always affirmative. It is not saying yes but demands by grace and hospitality a firm denial, a rapid rejection, an anti-thesis to much empirical progression, to become a living contra. It is a denial of self so that it may raise another person in its stead; a rapid rejection of divisions, of the faculties that do not immolate kinship; it is an anti-thesis to impetuosity of passions, it negates all that is ephemeral; it is the contra to infidelity and stagnation. It can be understood as seen by a man that loves a woman, by the very nature of love, must not only affirm his love for her but prove so by the negative; the rejection of others by his reservation of love hidden and given only to his woman.

The language of love is not the spoken word, it is not the Bible, but theology that is lived and conceives life. It is a life that impregnates in every man and woman the drive to hospitality, the drive to acknowledge a self worth that communicates compatibility for kinship on any level with no expectancy or anticipatory return of reward. It is simply gracious. It extends beyond the goodness of sympathy and permeates the gratuity of empathy. It finds it maturity and fulfillment in Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone’s teaching, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” Our kinship is only founded by our language of love, an inaudible cry, a subtle yet constant beckoning, a continual persuasion, a proposition with promise to phileo that matures to agape.

The language of love can only be spoken when all barriers have been lain and differences submitted. Love is an expression of persons, not things. For a man that tires of a woman’s emotions, if she not subdue them, has forgotten the person and objectified her as thoughtless emotion, thus forgetting her person-hood which demands respect and patience, dignity and care. A woman that tires of the elongated fathoms that entertains man’s reason, whether right or wrong, has forgotten the person and objectified him as emotionless logic, thus forgetting his person-hood which demands respect and understanding, dignity and conservation. When objectification masks a person, we then erect a facade, implementing these fallacious views onto individuals. These fallacies, which are disunities heavily guarded as “norms” or “standards”, are created in the image of abstract notions, notions of distortion, such as inferiority, differences, inadequacies, dissimilarities; all wanton justification for divisiveness. These are what Karol Wojtyla addresses when he cautions, “an excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.” Man has built upon selfishness a monument of excuses in that he may lie to himself, enabling himself to be guided into a false notion that we are not one, that there is not kinship. This, therefore, dismisses the fiat for the language of love.

The one who forgets the language of love exacts hatred. This dismissal of love draws into itself an abnormality that contends against man’s potential nature and that which may nurture its maturity. When a man forgets whom he is, he becomes. When a man forgets he is able to facilitate the capacity to altruism, he becomes narcissistic. When a man forgets he is forgivable, he becomes contentious. When a man forgets he is a person, he becomes an action, an object of consequence rarely seen as inseparable from his being. A man not seen for his being is then seen as an object of becoming. Becoming a distraction, a nuisance, an interruption, an inconvenience, an object defamed by a denial of invitation to kinship or extension to the language of love. It is only by intimately knowing the being of a person, not the action, do we delegate kinship and commence ourselves into the throes of charity. It is only by the embrace of love can man commission that which is his nature; to nurture and supplant vindictiveness for benevolence. When we speak the language of love, we breed kinship and bring to life the understanding that deserved justice would have extinguished us all; no one man better than the other. This is the language of love. This is kinship. All else may be regarded as, Bernard of Clairvaux taught, “the road to hell…paved with good intentions.”

The language of love must promote and bind itself to forgiveness. The language of love must cause ones self not to rise above another. It does not call for pardon or excuse but dissolves all barriers by an act of forgiveness. This call to kinship kindles humility, that no one man is more deserving of retribution than another. This call to kinship festers humbleness in that no one man can claim reason to deserve a greater allotment of wealth, compassion, mercy, dignity, respect, attention. Forgiveness generates from a healthy engagement in judgment. For only from judgment can mercy come. Judgment precedes all mercy, mercy gives way to compassion, compassion stimulates love, love impregnates and matures to service, and this conception of service births forgiveness which resolves all conflict and voids all transgressions. This nullification of conflict and iniquity destroys all boundaries and transcends the aspirations of man through the venue of kinship and love. But we first must forgive others as well as ourselves. If a person can not aid themselves than nor can they aid another. If a being does not find self respect, self worth, than with just the same pettiness will they return violence to others as they do against themselves. To not forgive another person, although we forgive ourself, is no less hypocritical than to forgive another person but not forgive ourself. We must acknowledge that every person, including ourselves, our very own being, begs mercy, compassion, love, kinship, forgiveness. If we can not see it in ourselves, if we do not see it in ourselves, how will we see it in others?

The language of love is a heavy stone, a felix culpa, which few shoulder, on the via dolorosa. But when we understand the purpose of this felix culpa, then do we become kinsmen indiscriminately. When another’s needs and essentials no longer exist as objects but as means of promoting a persons integral health and the welfare of their being, do we become kinsmen. It is only when we practice this sorrowful passion, a death to egotism, do we find that we do not place ourselves as the obstacles which hinder the way to kinship. When another’s needs and essentials no longer exist as objects, but as means of opportunity to dignify another as a person of respect and worth by our response to their needs, have we practiced the language of love. This is the road when “our walking is our preaching”, the via dolorosa. It is only down this road of suffering and sacrifice do we become not just advocates, not only profound but prolific rhetoricians of the language of love.

The language of love and the recognition of kinship is humanae vitae. When kinship is thought to be created, it is compromised. Only through recognition can kinship and the vitality of human life flourish. The thought of created kinship implements a lie that we first were not one but developed into being one. It is only by recognition, as we did not create kinship but were always united, that the language of love finds its each and every syllable gleaning with admonishment and vindication by not only surmising but ascertaining a kinship immemorial. Once the covert truth unveils that kinship is not ex post facto to our actions do we then embrace that kinship is a universal decree that is sustainable ad infinitum. It is only by recognition that it is a our nature, not our nurture, that the language of love presides over all man, uniting all into a commonality; an irrevocable echoing promulgation which does not extend a hand for an invitation but arms for embrace. Do not invite others as kinsmen, for they are not foreign or alien, but recognize they are kinsmen from the beginning and in arms embrace them as such. The greatest of the language of love and kinship is not found in lips willing to move and bodies refusing any exertion, but in tongues that refuse any motion to cause words and bodies unquenchable to the desire that moves us to charity. It is only after we recognize that we are intrinsically united that the whimsical thought of disunity becomes evidently extrinsic.

The language of love is the kinship and bond expressed by all persons. It holds among family, whether paternal, maternal, filial. It is the adhesive nature that conjoins in camaraderie patrons. It calls forth all religious into an ecumenical vocation of kinship and service of charity. The language of love finalizes kinship in that it is the single twine of thread, split into two chords (love and kinship), wrapping all mankind together and binding us by its knot, as one.

The language of love, the ecumenical call to kinship, will revert what mankind, by distortion of the appetites, has greatly subverted. The world has much forgotten “self-’giving’”, but has only remembered “self”. Mankind needs to embrace morality that transcends all barriers and permeates comfort levels. The power (to feel accepted or rejected) we allot others surely tempers a healthy society or conceives abhorrent acts. Greg Boyle S.J. says that whatever (problems) do not transform transmit.

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. [But] I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only love. ” – Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

2 Responses to “The Language of Love”

I love the quote at the end there. How true! Have you ever heard of the Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman? You might like it. I do think though that while love is an action, that the Word of God is a love letter to us.

I have heard of it, but have not read it. I will look into it. As for Scripture, I fully agree that it is God’s love letter to His children. As Mother Teresa says, “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” Everything God does, from kinship to Scripture, is a communication of love. Laus Deo!